Intruder
by Dante Must Die
Summary: Oneshot. A seemingly normal day at the Phantomhive Manor takes a turn for the disturbing...


It was on a day seemingly like any other that Ciel started to notice something strange. When he had first awoken that morning, Sebastian had been unusually quiet and very brief. He helped Ciel to dress, brought him his tea, and scurried out of the room before Ciel had a chance to ask what was for breakfast.

Ciel noted this as odd, but assumed Sebastian was just busy (probably with the other servants) and thought nothing further of it. He spent the morning getting lost in work, only realizing how long he had been buried in a bunch of paper when he glanced up at the grandfather clock resting on the wall opposite to him.

It read twelve o'clock. Lunch time.  
He hadn't heard anything from Sebastian.  
And if you don't know, for Sebastian to miss Ciel's mealtime was extremely out of character for him.

Now that he thought about it, Ciel had not heard any of the usual commotion from downstairs. The other servants usually made a generous amount of noise- Bardroy blowing up the kitchen, Mey-Rin breaking something or other, Finnian shouting for forgiveness because he somehow managed to destroyed the whole garden. Sebastian had always been there to make things right, so was the fact that Ciel hadn't heard anything so far a good thing or a bad one?

Ciel sat there for several minutes, thinking over these things, the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock filling the air. Sunlight streamed in from the window behind his desk, and when he took notice of it he was filled with the sudden urge to glance out the window, look outside.  
It was like a voice, mocking, cruel, evil-  
_look outsiiiiide, little booooy_  
- and no matter what he tried, he could not stop hearing it.

Ciel rose up from his seat, walked around to face the window. The sunlight was no longer calming. It was brimming with his fear, he couldn't explain it, he didn't want to look... but that inner voice haunted him, and he knew it would not go away until he did as it told.  
So he threw back the curtains.

At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. A rare blue sky, spotted with clouds. The garden and the bridge leading to the front gate. Ciel started to look away, but wait... Something was off. What were the huge smears of red, running along the walkways in the garden? It all led to an enormous, dark patch in the center, covering the flowers, the bushes, the trees. It looked like twenty people had been slaughtered in that one spot.

"Blood."

The word escaped his lips without him even realizing it. He stood there in confusion for what felt like three hours but was barely a moment, and then bolted across the room, shouting for Sebastian the entire time. Ciel reached the door with every intent to open it, but when his hand touched the doorknob he was suddenly aware of a rattling noise, the sound of a cart rolling across carpet, coming down the hall.

He didn't move until he heard the cart come to a halt somewhere outside. A feeling of unease took hold of him, so it was with hesitation that he opened the door and peeked out. There, just outside his door, was a cart with a tray and platter resting atop it. A wineglass was on the left, filled with a strange, dark substance.

Ciel opened the door wider and stepped out, glancing both ways down the hall. "Sebastian?"

An unsettling silence greeted him.

His eyes fell on the cart and platter, and for a moment he created a reasonable scenario for all this in his head. There was an intruder on the mansion grounds and Sebastian was aware of it, but brought Ciel lunch before he went off to kill them.

Yes, that sounds about right, Ciel thought, even though he wasn't convinced of this at all.

He reached over and pulled off the lid to the platter, and what he saw next made his blood turn to ice in his veins. There, sitting upright in the center of the cart, was the cleanly severed head of his butler Sebastian.

Ciel accidentally screamed.

Sebastian's eyes were stuck in a half-lidded stare, staring right out at him. Dark blood ran out of his mouth, spilling down his chin and pooling into a puddle beneath it. Ciel's eyes were inevitably drawn to the single wine glass brimming with an identical substance, sitting next to the head.

He slammed the cart backwards, against the opposite wall. The wine glass tipped over but the head inexplicably remained upright, staring at him.

Ciel ran back into the study, slamming the door behind him. He was sweating profusely, panting, horrified. What was that? A joke? It was just Sebastian having fun, he thought, that's all. But in his mind, Ciel knew that was far from the truth.

First of all, his butler, his guardian, his only companion in the world, was dead. Sebastian's severed head was sitting outside his door at that very moment. There was no denying that as the truth.

But who had done it- who was powerful enough to kill a demon? When had it happened and where were the other servants? Ciel stood in the center of the room, unable to move, his thoughts racing. And then he heard the click of footsteps outside his door, and the knob began to turn...


End file.
